Reflections

In mid September I accepted the position as a third year volunteer and this seemed to coincide perfectly with the start of the construction phase my cocinas project, the realizing that I was in charge of a Field Based Training for new volunteers that would take place in my site, my teen peer educators project moving into its next phase, and the end of service. Of course it always works that way. In the end everything seems to happen.

It suddenly felt like the world was crushing me with responsibility. All the days I had spent time throwing rocks at other rocks both literally and metaphorically seemed to be coming to fruition into real things. I didn’t know if I was capable of handling it all and actually being successful. I suddenly felt like I had a million things in my hands, just waiting to tumble and fall apart…

My moms seemed suddenly disinterested in the cocinas or getting their materials together. I felt a rush of negativity and self-doubt. Nearly every other voulenteer around me was done with their projects, packing up to go home, and I was just buying chimneys?!?! How slowly time moves in Huancavelica.

Could I suddenly finish everything I had set out to do? Did I get in over my head? Would I epically fail at everything? And how the fuck did everything seem to be happening at once? Did my community even care about the project or did I just thrust it upon them? Ain’t that some luck.

I had seen changes in my mothers here, in the community organization of my annex, in the self-awareness of my teens. But somehow when I was entrusted with doing things like constructing cocinas for them, guiding the teens through their teaching sessions with their peers, I felt like I had accomplished absolutely nothing, what I had thought I had done was all in my head. I was simply hallucinating and the end would prove how much the beginning and middle were fallacies. I can’t quite put a pin on what it was but for some reason I just felt like I was going to crumble. Or at the very least I didn’t do enough. The fact the project was coming to a close so late in my service was evidence of my failure. The fact several of my moms lost interest in the actual construction of the cocinas was evidence of its unsustainability.

I began to feel like I had taken too much personal control over he project. I had chosen the cocina style. I had written the grant. How on earth was what I was doing actually sustainable? How was it not just another example of an American barreling in and telling a community what was best for them? I began to become overwhelmed with guilt, stress, and spiraling down a “would have, should have, could have drain.” Which is never a drain you want to be going down in Peace Corps. You could literally spend your entire service in that drain. I began to doubt how someone who did a project so riddled with errors was qualified to be a third year leading other voulenteers.

At this moment I called my friend and former Peace Corps Volunteer Coordinator and for lack of better words a mentor. During an almost hour conversation she told me that it was not uncommon for volunteers to get really emotional at the construction point of a project. It is the culmination and suddenly when everything should be coming together but sometimes life doesn’t work as perfectly as you think it should. And in Peace Corps it never works out as perfectly as you think it should.

It can be hard when some mothers who had expressed interest in a cocina suddenly don’t want one. Others who had no interest in your work are begging at your door for a cocina…If only they had given any importance while you were working. It becomes emotional and overly stressful but then there is a moment when you have to just realize the mothers you worked with have changed. Combined at a point in your service when you begin to look around and think of all of the never finished projects, grand ideas you had that never came to fruition and knowing that the restraints of time will be your enemy it becomes a bit much.

Andrea pleasantly reminded me that with or without a cocina the mothers who genuinely worked with you would always have the knowledge and basis for behavior change. It does not necessarily have to be a package deal with a cocina. And in the end of the day I learned a valuable lesson about community development and sustainability.

Community development and sustainability are two of the hardest concepts to work with. After two years I still cant really answer the question of what sustainable development is. I can answer the question of what it isn’t. Oh so so so so much of my service has been learning what it isn’t. The project I am currently finishing up has taught me about 50% of those lessons.

There are many elements of my project that are things I shouldn’t have done to genuinely follow the model of the sustainable development. I think that that is part of what caused me so much stress at its final stages. I felt like I had failed at integrating the community enough in the design of the project and then in the construction stage I just felt like I was doing something with no real purpose. It felt like I was doing something that would just be forgotten the moment I walked away.

But then I was reminded even though there were admittedly parts of my project that didn’t follow the sustainable development model, or didn’t include enough community involvement during the design phase of the project there are parts of it that will be sustainable. Often these are the things you can’t tangibly grasp. The things that exist but are not as easily to put in a few sentences, the things that will stay long beyond my service. The gradual tilting of the projection of a rocket I will never see launch.

A teacher once told me that you should never write in pencil because over time it will erase and your wont be able to see it anymore, you should always write in pen. I have come to the realization that that Peace Corps is a lot like this statement. Strangely the things that make us as Peace Corps Volunteers feel like we are accomplishing something, like the structure of a cocina, or a mural, are the things written in pencil. The things that will be unreadable in 5, 10, 20 years.

The things we cannot easily wrap our finger around, the behavior change, a rise in self esteem, a change in outlook, a friend, a new door opened that we never even knew existed, a simple conversation or exchange, these are the things that are written in pen.

In all likelihood the cocinas that I have built, as much good as they are at the moment, will not be there in 10 years, they will be a faded memory, maybe changed, maybe destroyed, maybe gradually maintained to still work. Although I can see them today, in the scale of history they are written in pencil. Doomed to the inevitable fate of degradation of most structures or murals in Peru. They will succumb to the element of nature, human folly and time. Evolution will inevitably erase them from my community’s landscape.

Although the physical vibrant changes are the things that make a volunteer feel like they have actually been there. The things that make we grasp to feel like we actually served a purpose our physical changes, unless they are a massive scale municipal wind turbine, will disappear from the landscapes of our towns.

But it is the things such as behavior change, opportunity, hope, a new idea; these are the things that will not fade with time. They will change, morph, maybe fade into the background, but at the end of the day they will be there. You can never unmet someone, you can never un-live an experience, you can never un-eat a meal or you can never un-have a conversation. You may forget, or the memory may get blurry at with the sands of time but it still happened.

I think this is part of what is so hard about Peace Corps. So much of what we do is intangible. So much is hard to explain to someone who didn’t live it. And inevitably we feel like we could have done more. Or wonder will things actually live on once we leave. We can all figure out ways to describe what we have done, but in the end words are not enough. I will never be able to fully explain what I did or the experience I have had. And since I have picked up a really bad Spanglish habit I really wont be able to do it only I one language.

Although I have to come to the acceptance that this part of my service is ending and a new chapter is beginning I can only hope that some part of my time here is written in pen for at least one person. Even if its not necessarily what I think it is.